Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are more likely to have end stage kidney disease and be hospitalised or die with chronic kidney disease than non-Indigenous people.4

The greater prevalence of chronic kidney disease in some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is due to the high incidence of traditional risk factors, including diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking, in addition to higher levels of inadequate nutrition, alcohol abuse, streptococcal throat and skin infection, poor living conditions and low birth weight, which is linked to reduced nephron development.4

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience a higher burden of disease; two and a half times that of non-Indigenous people.

A large part of the burden of disease is due to chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and chronic kidney disease.

This higher burden can be reduced by identifying chronic disease earlier and through the management of risk factors and the disease itself. See more about the management of risk factors here.

A new systematic review and meta-analysis finds that lowering the cost of healthy foods significantly increases their consumption, while raising the cost of unhealthy items significantly reduces their intake.

Food subsidies and taxes significantly improve dietary choices

Interventions that alter food prices can improve people’s diets, leading to more healthy choices and fewer unhealthy choices

While everyone has a sense that food prices matter, the magnitude of impact of food taxes and subsidies on dietary intakes, and whether this varies by the food target, has not been clear. For the review, a team of researchers identified and pooled findings from a total of 30 interventional and longitudinal studies, including 11 that assessed the effect of higher prices (taxation) of unhealthy foods and 19 that assessed the effect of lower prices (subsidies) of healthy foods.

“To date, evidence on effectiveness of fiscal policies on diet has mostly come from cross-sectional studies, which cannot infer causality. This is why we evaluated studies that examined the relationship between food price and diet over time,” said co-first author Ashkan Afshin, M.D., former postdoctoral fellow at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University and now at the University of Washington. “Our results show how 10 to 50 percent changes in price of foods and beverages at checkout could influence consumers’ purchasing behaviors over a relatively short period of time.”

In the pooled analysis, each 10 percent decrease in price of fruits and vegetables increased their consumption by 14 percent, and each 10 percent decrease in price of other healthy foods increased their consumption by 16 percent. A change in price of fruits and vegetables was also associated with body mass index (BMI): for every 10 percent price decrease, BMI declined by 0.04 kg/m2.

By merging findings from 23 interventional and 7 prospective cohort studies, the researchers evaluated relationships between the change in the price of specific foods or beverages and the change in their intake. Studies evaluated people’s reported intake or data on sales of foods and beverages. The study populations included children, adults, or both; and countries included the United States, the Netherlands, France, New Zealand, and South Africa. Price change interventions were conducted in various settings such as cafeterias, vending machines and supermarkets. The findings were centrally pooled in a meta-analysis.

This work was supported by awards from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (HL098048, HL115189) and from The New York Academy of Sciences’ Sackler Institute for Nutrition Science. For conflicts of interest disclosure, please see the study.

About the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University

The Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University is the only independent school of nutrition in the United States. The school’s eight degree programs – which focus on questions relating to nutrition and chronic diseases, molecular nutrition, agriculture and sustainability, food security, humanitarian assistance, public health nutrition, and food policy and economics – are renowned for the application of scientific research to national and international policy.